Should your creature be fierce or friendly?
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Structures for scaling up
It is important that children of all abilities get the opportunity to make a full size version of their creature. This will be particularly challenging for below-average and less able children. It will be easier for these children to succeed if you move away from a structure composed of thin beams to one made from blocks. The children can use old cereal boxes for the blocks and treat them as if they were bricks arranging them in a pile that gives the form of the creature.
This brick building approach is particularly good for producing a creature that is sitting up and begging. You will need a lot of boxes and they should be organised into groups of the same size and shape to make construction easier. Once the overall form is complete, the 'bricks' can be held together using 'gaffer' tape and covered with paper of an appropriate colour. The head can be made to look realistic by using 3D decoration rather than illustration. Extra features such as claws and wings can also be added. The skin can be made to look realistic by adding scales made from rough textured paper.
More able children can use a tripod structure for the backbone and two hind legs for creatures that have the form of a T rex. The parts of this structure can be made from card tubes or, if this proves difficult, from stout garden cane. Adding folded card pieces as with the small Skilly can produce the body form of the creature. If the legs tend to splay causing the creature to sag you can solve the problem by tying the legs together at the ankles with a piece of string.